The present invention relates to a camera with a positioning capability.
A positioning apparatus which is used in GPS(Global Positioning System)-based position determination (hereinafter called “GPS positioning apparatus”) determines the current position (local position) based on positioning information sent from a plurality of GPS satellites. Such a GPS positioning apparatus is incorporated into an on-board navigation system or the like and is used to determine and display the local position (coordinates). Some GPS positioning apparatuses manufactured are of the size that can be installed into a wrist watch.
With such a small GPS positioning apparatus installed into a digital camera or a silver halide camera to measure the position of the camera, it is possible to, for example, automatically record the photographing location or the like in association with each photographed image. It is therefore expected that the utilization of the GPS positioning apparatus can further improve the usability or operability of cameras and contribute data collection by the cameras.
In this case where the GPS positioning apparatus is incorporated into, for example, a digital camera, however, when this GPS positioning apparatus is activated at the time the camera picks up an image, power consumed by the GPS positioning apparatus is added to power consumed by the drive system and image processing system of the camera in picking up the image. This requires a larger current than the current that is needed when the GPS positioning apparatus is not incorporated, thus significantly shortening the battery life.
Even when the GPS positioning apparatus is incorporated in a silver halide camera, power consumed by the GPS positioning apparatus is likewise added to power consumed by the drive system that is operated at the time of picking up an image (because the drive systems of recent silver halide cameras are electronically controlled). This case therefore also has a problem on a shorter battery life.
There is another shortcoming such that a noise component which is generated by the photographing process adversely influences the GPS positioning apparatus, so that positioning may not be performed properly.
In this case, one may incorporate the GPS positioning apparatus in a digital camera to acquire positional information of the digital camera every time a picture is taken, store the information as positional information of the photographed image and display the photographing location together with the photographed image at the time of reproducing the image. However, the time of positioning by the GPS positioning apparatus varies from about 1 second to about 10 seconds, depending on the positional relationship with GPS satellites as mentioned above or the reception environment. If a user tries to activate the GPS positioning apparatus to acquire positional information every time a picture is taken, the user may have to wait for about 10 seconds for each photographing and may not be able to take shots consecutively without much intervals. (A similar problem would occur when the GPS positioning apparatus is incorporated into a silver halide camera.)
Doing position determination every time photo-graphing takes place requires the same number of positioning actions as the number of shots or increases the load at the time of photographing. This leads to increased power consumption.
Some electronic cameras, such as a digital camera, is equipped with a so-called “series photographing capability” which continuously picks up a predetermined number of images over a predetermined time interval when a user depresses the shutter button once or keeps depressing it.
With a small GPS positioning apparatus installed into such a digital camera or a silver halide camera equipped with the series photographing capability to measure the position of the camera, it is possible to, for example, automatically record the photographing location or the like in association with each photographed image. It is therefore expected that the utilization of the GPS positioning apparatus can further improve the usability or operability of cameras and contribute data collection by the cameras.
In this case, one may incorporate the GPS positioning apparatus in a digital camera equipped with the series photographing capability to acquire positional information of the digital camera every time photographing takes place, store the information as positional information of the photographed image and display the photographing location together with the photographed image at the time of reproducing the image.
As mentioned above, however, the time of positioning by the GPS positioning apparatus varies from about 1 second to about 10 seconds, depending on the positional relationship with GPS satellites as mentioned above or the reception environment. If a user tries to activate the GPS positioning apparatus every time an image is picked up in the series photographing action to acquire positional information, the photographing time interval is likely to vary as in the following example. Even if series photographing takes place at the same photographing location, the positioning time may be changed by a change in the reception conditions, or if series photographing takes place while moving, the positioning time may be changed by due to the influence of the reception environment (the attenuation, reflection or the like of received radio waves caused by the landscape, buildings, etc.). If the user acquires positioning information every time a picture is taken and associates the positioning information with each photographed image (each of serially photographed images), the photographing time interval follows up the positioning time and is thus likely to vary.
Doing position determination every time photographing takes place requires the same number of positioning actions as the number of shots or causes the photographing manipulation and the positioning operation to overlap each other, thus increasing the load at the photographing time. This results in increased power consumption.